SquarePeg Books

“Oubliette” is a French term, derived from “to forget”, and is a bottle-dungeon, in medieval architecture terms. A tiny space accessible only through a roof hatch, it was, perhaps, the most unpleasant of dungeons.

My brain has a kind of Oubliette. At first, they were just downward spirals–I’d touch bottom, maybe hang out a little bit, then swim quickly back to the surface.

The spirals have gotten steeper over the years, and the bottom has been altered by a few sinkholes that randomly came in to rearrange things, making it a lot harder to climb out than in my youth. Some of it is damage due to age and erosion. Some are due to more recent happenings.

There are many different aspects to the problem of climbing out:

1 – what worked last time might work this time, or not

2 – it takes a while to figure out if the tools that helped last time, or any of the times before that, will work this time

3 – if those tools aren’t working, I’ve usually slid quite a bit further down before I figure it out or

4 – let’s just enter a new, fresh, level of hell for the xp

Lately, I’m halfway down the Oubliette before I even realize it, and gaining speed, because, well, a downward slope tends to go down. The slides happen faster now, almost in the blink of an eye. I’ll be great one day and then the next I’m down and sinking.

It’s hard to work, to think, to plan about thinking about working on something, anything, because the focus is just shot. Movement takes energy I don’t have, thinking takes energy I don’t seem to have.

I need to move, to think, to work, but it’s hard sometimes.